Music

Classical

Performing ArtsStan Honda—AFP/Getty ImagesIt was a frigid day in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2009, when classical music, literally, took centre stage at the inauguration of U.S. Pres. Barack Obama. As part of the festivities, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, clarinetist Anthony McGill, and pianist Gabriela Montero performed the debut of Air and Simple Gifts, composed for the event by John Williams. The performance went off without a hitch—not surprisingly, given that it had actually been prerecorded and was mimed by the illustrious musicians.

When the deception was revealed days later, a controversy began to stir. The media made references to Milli Vanilli, the infamous lip-syncing pop duo. The furor subsided quickly, however, when it was reported that the cold had prevented a “live” performance because of the effect low temperatures have on musical instruments. In fact, Ma and Perlman had put soap on their bows to dull the sound of their instruments so as not to intrude on the recording, which had been made the previous Sunday at a Marine barracks in Washington. (The piece was subsequently given its concert debut January 23 by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.) It was that sort of year in classical music, when the controversies surrounding the music tended at times to obscure the music itself.

Earlier in January, Argentine-born Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim canceled performances in Doha, Qatar, and in Cairo because of security concerns related to the ongoing fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas. The concerts were part of the 10th anniversary tour of Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which was composed of young musicians from Israel, Palestine, and Arab countries.

In March a West Bank children’s orchestra, the Strings of Freedom, was shuttered by local residents after it performed a concert for Holocaust survivors in Israel. An official of the Jenin refugee camp accused the orchestra’s leader of having exploited the children for political purposes in what was billed as a Good Deeds Day event organized by an Israeli billionaire.

Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman created a stir of his own when in April he announced during a performance at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, that because of his objection to U.S. foreign policy, he would no longer perform in the United States. “Get your hands off my country,” he told stunned concertgoers.

During the summer the New York Philharmonic made political waves when it announced that it was considering performing in Havana. When continuing U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba ultimately forced the concerts to be canceled, the Cuban government proclaimed its outrage and blamed the fracas on the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, two opera stars who had previously announced their retirement changed their minds. In May, Spanish tenor José Carreras, 62, announced that “my [opera] career is done.” In August, New Zealand soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, 65, said that her opera career was coming to an end as well. While neither singer had ruled out future recital appearances, they both subsequently withdrew any plans to quit the world of opera. Meanwhile, Plácido Domingo, 68—no longer able to hit the high notes that made him one of the most illustrious tenors of his generation—drew a standing ovation when in October he made his debut appearance in a baritone role in a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra at the Staatsoper in Berlin.

Oddly, given its role as a perennial source of familial (soap) opera, the 2009 edition of Germany’s Bayreuth Festival opened with a children’s version of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. Children were even encouraged to participate in the newly conceived truncated version of the opera, which was the brainchild of new festival co-directors, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner. The half sisters, both great-granddaughters of the composer, took over the reins of the annual Wagner festival from their father, Wolfgang, who had ruled the festival roost for more than half a century. Katharina Wagner told the press that “it is a matter of the heart for me to bring opera to the people.” As part of that effort, the new directors also announced a deal with London’s Royal Opera House’s Opus Arte production company to release the festival’s productions on DVD, and on August 9 they offered the festival’s performance of Tristan und Isolde live on the Internet.

As it had often in recent years, the world of classical music continued to embrace the Internet as a way of extending its outreach and influence. In June the New York Philharmonic announced that it was creating an online archive of concert data reaching back to its first performance on Dec. 7, 1842. The service offered online users the ability to search its database by composer, artist, and individual concert programs.

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra pursued a more commercial course with its online “digital concert hall,” in which performances were made available either live or via reruns on the Internet. The fee for a single concert was €9.90, and the cost of a season ticket was €149 (1€ = about $1.40). Sir Simon Rattle kicked off the online offerings in January with a performance of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1.

In July, Classical TV, an online streaming video service, was launched, offering both free and pay-per-view opera, ballet, and theatre performances. In addition to more than a dozen productions from New York’s Metropolitan Opera (the Met), Classical TV also presented broadcasts by the English National Opera, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Zürich Opera, and others. The price of an online viewing was $4.99 or $9.99 per performance.

Twitter, the online social network phenomenon, was the star of the show in September at London’s Royal Opera House. The company presented The Twitter Opera, with music by composer Helen Porter and a libretto made up of the site’s signature short messages submitted by the public via the ROH’s @youropera Twitter feed. Twitter was also the focus of a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra in July. During the orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s Sixth (Pastoral) Symphony, concertgoers could follow the music with 50 “tweets” about the score that were sent to their Web-enabled mobile devices from the conductor, who had prewritten such tweetful insights as “In my score Beethoven has printed Nightingale=flute Quail=oboe Cuckoo=clarinet—a mini concerto for woodwind/birds.” (See alsoSidebar.)

Not to be outdone, another Internet site entered the action when on April 15 the YouTube Symphony Orchestra made its debut at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. The orchestra was made up of 93 musicians who had been selected from some 3,000 audition videos that had been submitted to the Web site from more than 70 countries. Fifteen million online visitors voted on the winners, who were led in the debut performance by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. The U.K.’s Gramophone magazine hailed the orchestra “for democratising classical music on a global scale, making it truly all-inclusive.”

Even as the classical world embraced the future, it was confronted by the disturbing economic realities of the present. While the nonprofit group Americans for the Arts estimated that the ongoing recession in 2009 would force as many as 10,000 arts organizations out of business, classical orchestras and opera and ballet companies tried to weather the economic storm. Both the Met and the Los Angeles Opera cut productions from their seasons and cut salaries; the Los Angeles Opera laid off 17 people in the process. The Connecticut Opera closed after 67 seasons, as did the Opera Pacific, Santa Ana, Calif., and the Baltimore (Md.) Opera declared bankruptcy. Budgetary problems caused the San Francisco Opera to cancel a production of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes and a revival of Puccini’s La Bohème.

Financial difficulties were not confined to the U.S. Russia’s Bolshoi Theatre was forced to cancel a tour of Mexico and the premiere of its new production of Verdi’s Otello.Italy’s Maggio Musicale Fiorentino called off productions of Verdi’s Macbeth and Britten’s Billy Budd that were to have been featured at the Florence festival. South Korea particularly felt the impact when tours to that country by the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, and the Cincinnati (Ohio) Symphony were called off for reasons of belt-tightening.

After a career that spanned 45 years, the legendary Guarneri String Quartet called it quits in 2009. Three of the group’s members had founded the ensemble at Vermont’s Marlboro Music Festival in 1963 and were in their 70s.

As some books were closed, new chapters for others were opened. In an October program at the Hollywood Bowl, entitled “Bienvenido Gustavo,” 28-year-old Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel made his debut as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In June Lorin Maazel led his last performance as music director of the New York Philharmonic with a concert at Avery Fisher Hall before being succeeded in the post in September by Alan Gilbert. In October Rattle reaffirmed his commitment to the Berlin Philharmonic when he signed a contract to continue as the orchestra’s artistic director through 2018.

Throughout the year orchestras in the U.S. and Europe marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of composer Felix Mendelssohn with performances of his works. In one of the most notable events, 13 of the German composer’s long-lost works were performed in January at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. Two previously unknown works by Mozart were heard for the first time in August when the International Mozarteum Foundation, based in Salzburg, Austria, unveiled them in a performance by pianist Florian Birsak, who played the pieces on the composer’s own fortepiano. In October the sound of Frederick the Great’s flute was heard for the first time in more than 200 years when the instrument was played at the Usedom Music Festival on the eponymous Baltic island.

An opera by popular singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright debuted in July at the Manchester (Eng.) International Festival. The work, Prima Donna, was originally commissioned by the Met, but the company withdrew when Wainwright decided to write the libretto in French. Canadian playwright-director John Murrell’s English libretto for composer Leos Janacek’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen received its premiere in August at the Banff (Alta.) Centre. In February the New York Philharmonic performed the debut of an orchestral work, Laboratory, by 13-year-old George Frankle of Scarsdale, N.Y., during a School Day Concert.

In one of the more glittering events of the year, the Met presented its 125th Anniversary Gala in March. The four-hour performance included appearances by Roberto Alagna, Angela Gheorghiu, Domingo, Renée Fleming, Dmitry Hvorostovsky, Natalie Dessay, and a host of others in selections from 23 operas, some featuring re-creations of sets and costumes from fabled productions of the company’s past.

The 50th anniversary of New York City’s Lincoln Center was celebrated in May with a performance in the centre’s recently renovated Alice Tully Hall. The New York Philharmonic re-created conductor Leonard Bernstein’s performance of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, which Bernstein had led at the centre’s groundbreaking in 1959.

In May the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinetist, Stanley Drucker, went onstage at the last moment to fill in for a missing first clarinetist in a performance of Dmitry Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Drucker, 80, who was not scheduled to play that night and who had not performed the piece since the 1950s, reportedly did not drop a note. It was a delightful and unexpected coda to a career that ended with his retirement in 2009 after 60 years with the orchestra.

The classical world was saddened during the year by the passing of several of its most beloved performers, including sopranos Hildegarde Behrens of Germany and Elisabeth Söderström of Sweden and conductor Erich Kunzel, Jr., who helmed the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra for more than 30 years. Other losses included those of soprano Lois Hunt, one of the champions of the American musical theatre, who passed away on July 26 at age 84 in New York City, and classical music critic, author, educator, and program annotator Michael Steinberg, who left a lasting legacy when he died, July 26, near Minneapolis, Minn., at age 80.

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